Community health centers serve more than 22 million people at more than 9,000 sites located throughout the U.S. states and territories. The NACHC works with a network of state health center and primary care organizations to provide research-based advocacy for health centers and their clients, educate the public about the mission and value of health centers, train and provide technical assistance to health center staff and boards and develop alliances with private partners and key stakeholders to foster the delivery of primary health care services to communities in need.

This interactive system allows users to stratify and compare more than 70 different health measures using Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data from 2004-10. It features three types of data: disability, psychological distress, and disability-associated health care expenditures and enables users to display data through four interactive components: map, trend line, bar chart, and data table. DHDS also allows users to compare health indicators for people with and without disabilities to be able to identify disparities in health indicators.

This conservative organization contends that health care is one of the most highly regulated sectors of the American economy and that government financing means government control, and government control means less personal freedom.

Explore the provisions of the Affordable Care Act and find the latest regulations. View the timeline for the highlights of the law, or use the "Find Health Reform Provisions" tool to search for specific provisions by year, category, and/or stakeholder group.

On the preliminary campaign trail, Republicans vying for their party's president nomination attack Massachusetts' near universal coverage – which was created under then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and state Democrats, including the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. In Washington, Republicans are seeking to repeal the national health law that was in part based on the Massachusetts model, while also pushing to turn Medicaid into a block grant, saying they don't have enough flexiblity to control costs and innovate. Romney's successor, Democrat Deval Patrick, testified June 23 before the Senate Finance Committee hearing on health entitlements. He addressed all of the above – stressing that his state was able to become a trailblazer withiin the current parameters on flexiblity.

If there's one thing health policy has in abundance, it's acronyms. So many that CMS (itself an acronym and a truncated one at that; as it stands for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has an online acronym guide. There are hundreds of entries, alphabetically arranged. Some are quite obscure.

The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (about) maintains the Global Health Data Exchange (or GHDx), a sort of clearinghouse for global public health data sets. At launch, the site boasted around 1,000 data sets and promised that it will both index and host "information about microdata, aggregated data, and research results with a focus on health-related and demographic datasets."

Written with reporters in mind,"Covering Health Issues" is useful for anyone looking for concise information on health policy issues, and experts from across the political spectrum. Chapters contain fast facts, background, tips for reporters, story ideas and experts with contact information. The book also includes an extensive glossary and ideas for TV and radio reporters.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse's 27-page media guide is a collection of up-to-date facts, figures and research on drug abuse and addiction in what NIDA hopes will be a journalist-friendly format. Get the full pdf here. The guide helps reporters understand why drug addiction occurs and how it is manifested, which drugs are abused, who abuses them and how they can be dangerous. It also includes a glossary and directions to further resources.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse is part of the National Institutes of Health, which in turn is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The RAND Corporation has released an online tool designed to help people "understand, design, and evaluate health policies." The tool, COMPARE (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts), has sections about current health care, policy options, an analysis of options and modeling estimates. A "Policy Options Dashboard" allows users to explore the effects of commonly proposed health care reforms by customizing the options and clicking on links that explain concepts.

This search engine scans journals, systematic reviews, and evidence-based articles that are written and edited for clinicians practicing in primary care and all major specialties. It also selects and scans patient-directed Web sites, online CME courses, and government databases of clinical trials and practice guidelines.

This nonprofit organization provides education, research, policy analysis and technical assistance to support fundamental improvements in the way that adolescent health care is structured and financed. It offers issue briefs and white papers on adolescent health care and reform.

The Federal Trade Commission has created this website to help you find reliable sources of information on health topics important to you, whether you're an older consumer or a family member, caregiver, or friend. You can:

The National Center for Health Statistics offers downloadable public-use data files through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's FTP file server. Data sets, documentation and questionnaires from NCHS surveys and data collection systems are available. Among the data available:

This CDC program is intended to help people better recognize and prevent MRSA skin infections. Offers info about MRSA for consumers and health care professionals, including photos and a treatment algorithm.

Consumers and health care professionals can now go to a single page on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Web site to find safety information about prescription drugs. The Web page provides links to information about:

Drug labeling

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies

Searchable database of postmarket studies

Clinicaltrials.gov, a searchable database of clinical trials

Drug-specific safety information

Reports based on information in the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System

These case studies are interactive exercises developed to teach epidemiologic principles and practices. They are based on real-life outbreaks and public health problems and were developed in collaboration with the original investigators and experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The case studies require students to apply their epidemiologic knowledge and skills to problems confronted by public health practitioners at the local, state, and national level every day. Topics include botulism, E. coli O157:H7 infection, gastroenteritis, oharyngitis and salmonella.

HCUPnet is a free, online query system based on data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. It provides access to health statistics and information on hospital inpatient and emergency department utilization.

Links to more than 6,000 government and nonprofit health information resources on hundreds of health topics. Information is in English and Spanish. The site was relaunched Sept. 22, 2008, after being redesigned to be more user-friendly.

Dr. Sean Mackey, an associate professor of anesthesia and pain management at Stanford University, is researching the use of functional MRI's to map brain activity, and to teach patients to cognitively reduce their own pain. On Sept. 30, 2008, Mackey spoke to the Commonwealth Club of California and presented new information on the use of brain-imaging tools to literally "see" where pain is processed, what happens when it goes bad, and how these tools may offer hope for the future. Video of his presentation is online.

Online tool allows users to search and sort the report measuring local performance for several health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, depression and low back pain. It includes performance results for 26 hospitals in the Puget Sound (Wash.) region, using public data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The government has unveiled a database that contains data on death, injury and property damage claims (including lawsuits) submitted to the manufacturer, along with light vehicle production data. The “early warning” data was released Sept. 10, 2008, as the result of a federal appeals court ruling in July that barred the government from withholding key data reported by manufacturers. More information about the data is here (PDF).

NARMH is a membership organization composed of organizations and individuals from across the United States and a few foreign countries. It develops and enhances rural mental health and substance abuse services, supports mental health providers in rural areas, supports initiatives that will strengthen the voices of rural consumers and mentor the next generation of rural mental health leaders and researchers.

The Deployment Health and Family Readiness Library is an online resource with fact sheets, step-by-step guides, videos, links to other outlets and resources and more. Topics include possible deployment-related illnesses and diseases, caregiver stress, deployment reunion issues, preventive medicine, mental health, caring for service members who suffer from PTSD, how to prevent infections from foreign diseases and more.

Leaders in the U.S. Department of Defense's Military Health System, including S. Ward Casscells, M.D., assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs, post items related to health of military personnel.

Dig into information about federal contracts using this searchable database with many criteria. For example, the page for HHS contracts shows a summary page with total dollars, contractors, transactions and much more. Drill down to find out what the contract was for, whether there were other bidders, information about the contractor and much more. Be sure to use the "Search Criteria" box in the upper left-hand area of the screen to determine how detailed your results are.

This NLM Enviro-Health Links page includes links to sites about mercury reduction, occupational exposure, compact fluorescent light bulbs, mercury in health care, regulations and state legislation, and preformed searches of TOXLINE, PubMed, the Hazardous Substances Data Bank and other government data. Enviro-Health Links includes resources on toxicology and environmental health issues of recent special interest, including wildfires, pesticide exposure, air pollution, West Nile virus and other topics.

This site, from CMS, now includes information about whether specific nursing homes are on or has been on CMS’ special focus facility (SFF) list. The SFF initiative gives heightened scrutiny to nursing homes that have a history of poor performance or repeated violations of state and federal health and safety rules. As of April 2008, there are 134 SFFs, out of about 16,000 active nursing homes.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created this site as the federal government's repository for successful health care innovations. It also includes descriptions of attempts at innovation that failed. The Web site is a tool for those who seek to reduce health care disparities and improve health care overall.

This program, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, recognizes people who overcome obstacles to improve health and health care in their communities. The directory includes 153 Community Health Leaders in 45 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

The goal of this chartbook is to create an easily accessible resource that can help policy makers, teachers, researchers, and practitioners begin to understand disparities in their communities and to formulate solutions.

The National Center for Sports Safety promotes the importance of injury prevention and safety in youth sports through education and research. The NCSS focuses on decreasing the number and/or severity of injuries through developing and teaching sports safety courses and collecting, analyzing and researching injury data.

The National Library of Medicine's Drug Information Portal is intended to give the public, health care professionals and researchers current and accurate information. More than 16,000 drug records are available, with data drawn from 16 sources, including Medline, the DEA, the FDA, AIDSinfo and more.

TOXMAP now contains updated cancer and other mortality data. TOXMAP also now shows more detailed roads at a variety of map scales. TOXMAP is a geographic information system from the Division of Specialized Information Services of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund Program. TOXMAP's chemical and environmental health information is taken from NLM's TOXNET, PubMed and other sources.

Update (4/18/2008): TOXMAP now includes the 2006 Toxics Release Inventory data (TRI). TOXMAP's cancer and health data has been updated, and health risk information links and EPA Environmental Health news have been added.

Research and training program within the Stanford [University] Prevention Research Center to advance research and education on current patterns of health care, the process of behavior change, evaluation of prevention strategies, and designing interventions to facilitate evidence-based practice.

The Census Bureau and other statistical bodies have attempted to capture the concept of disability for the purpose of measurement. Since the definition of a disability varies, the collection of disability statistics depends on the purpose for which it is being used and the survey collecting the information. While the Census Bureau collects disability data from four household surveys, other agencies also collect disability data. Depending on your needs, one survey may be more suitable than another.

American Hospital Directory Inc. provides hospital information and data for more than 6,000 hospitals in the United States. Its data is drawn from public and private sources, including Medicare claims data, hospital cost reports and other files obtained from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Free media passes are available.

VAERS, from the CDC and FDA, is a post-marketing safety surveillance program, collecting information about adverse events that occur after the administration of U.S.-licensed vaccines. Data is available back to 1990.

A collection of toxicology and environmental health databases from the National Library of Medicine that includes the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB®), a database of potentially hazardous chemicals, TOXLINE® (containing references to the world's toxicology literature), and ChemIDplus (a chemical dictionary and structure database)

Larry Rothman, Ph.D., has launched the blog Pharmservices about how outsourcing and globalization affect healthcare, pharmaceuticals and other related life sciences. He encourages support from registered readers.

This hands-on, problem-based learning kit has been designed to provide the user with fundamental knowledge for providing culturally competent care to individuals, families, and communities from various ethnic, religious, cultural, or social settings.

The NCCHC describes its mission as to "improve the quality of health care in jails, prisons and juvenile confinement facilities." The not-for-profit organization says it offers resources to help correctional health care systems provide efficient, high quality care.

APIC's mission is to improve health and patient safety by reducing risks of infection and other adverse outcomes. The Association's more than 11,000 members have primary responsibility for infection prevention, control and hospital epidemiology in health care settings around the globe, and include nurses, epidemiologists, physicians, microbiologists, clinical pathologists, laboratory technologists and public health practitioners.

A blog written by "senior public health scientists and practitioners" who say their names would be "immediately recognizable to many in the public health community." Describes itself as a "forum for progressive public health discussion and argument as well as a source of public health information from around the Web that interests the editor(s)."

Right-free video library for global health footage from Kaiser Family Foundation's GlobalHealthReporting.org. Current footage is mostly AIDS-related but the library is gathering other footage as well. Journalists can order a clip reel specific to the region they are reporting on.

This toolkit put together by the Alliance for Health Reform aims to help you understand trends in U.S. health spending, and some of the reasons why spending is going up. It also covers some ideas for restraining health care costs. It also offers story ideas, selected experts with contact information, selected websites, and a glossary.

The ESRI Health GIS Conference Proceedings is a collection of conference presentations from October 2007 that illustrate ways of using mapping to look at health issues. ESRI develops and sells geographic information system software.Many of the presentations are from public health officials from around the country and they cover a wide range of public health issues.

The EPA released the first round of sampling results from its Lower Manhattan Test and Clean program, established to identify the possible presence of contaminants associated with the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. The agency continues to test and will update the Web site as more data becomes available. The program is testing for asbestos, man-made vitreous fibers, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and lead.

Thomson Healthcare, publisher of the Physicians' Desk Reference, has launched PDRhealth.com as a free site for consumers. It includes information about drugs and supplements, diseases and conditions and has online health tools.

NREPP, a service of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is a searchable database of interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental and substance use disorders.

Webcast of the American Health Information Community on Nov. 13, 2007. The committee advise the HHS secretary and recommends specific actions to achieve a common interoperability framework for health information technology (IT) and serve as a forum for stakeholders to provide input on achieving interoperability of health IT.

The Wellesley Institute is a Toronto-based non-profit and non-partisan research and policy institute. Their focus is on developing research and community-based policy solutions to the problems of urban health and health disparities.

The Medicine and Madison Avenue Project presents images and database information for about 600 health-related advertisements in newspapers and magazines. These ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s. The collection represents a range of products, such as cough and cold remedies, laxatives and indigestion aids, and vitamins and tonics, among others. In addition to the advertisements themselves, the MMA Web site includes historical material that put health-related advertising into a broader perspective. This is a project of the National Humanities Center in collaboration with the Duke University Library and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The Alliance for Health Reform created a toolkit to expand on its August 29 webcast. The kit contains resources to help explain what crowd-out is, how much of of a factor it would be in the expansion of SCHIP and what can be done to minimize it.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy has launched a Web site that offers information about community-level practices for dealing with public health emergencies. Browse by state or by category. Categories include triage strategies, risk communications and community engagement. The site has more than 130 practices from four countries, 22 states, and 33 counties.

SAMHSA, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is the lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment, and mental health services in the United States. Its Office of Applied Studies collects and reports on national and state data.

This nonpartisan policy research organization in Washington, D.C., designs and conducts studies focused on the U.S. health care system. Research areas include insurance coverage and costs, access to care, quality and care delivery and health care markets. Funded principally by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is affiliated with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

The Partnership for Health Care Excellence's www.partnershipforhealthcare.org gives Mass. consumers health care tips, and has links to federal, state and nonprofit Web sites containing information about hospital care, quality rankings, and care and cost data. Other links have detailed information about how to choose a hospital or deal with multiple medications.

This background paper describes a model the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) developed to simulate and analyze an array of policy options involving health insurance coverage. It describes the model’s design, basic methodology, and fundamental assumptions. To illustrate the model’s use, the paper reports estimates for two scenarios in which policy regarding health insurance coverage would differ from current law.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) offers a new Web resource to help employers and workers address workplace concerns associated with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality since 1998, is an independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care. The USPSTF conducts assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling and preventive medications. The USPSTF evaluatse the benefits of individual services based on age, gender, and risk factors for disease; makes recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identifies a research agenda for clinical preventive care.

Employee Benefit Research Institute has released the 2007 Health Confidence Survey. It finds that rising costs are changing how Americans use the health care system. Changes include taking better care of themselves, talking to doctors more carefully about treatment options and costs, delaying doctors visits and skipping doses or not filling prescriptions.

The CDC malaria risk map application is an interactive map which provides information on malaria risk throughout the world. Users can search or browse countries, cities, and place names and get information about the risk of malaria in that particular location and see recommended malaria prevention medicines for that area.

This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. There are now 2,866 journals in the directory. Currently 918 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 156,738 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has tracked foodborne illness outbreaks since 1997. The Outbreak Alert! database includes only outbreaks where both the food and pathogen have been identified and currently has information on 5,000 outbreaks that occurred between 1990 to 2004.

PDQ is the National Cancer Insitute's comprehensive cancer database, with peer-reviewed summaries on cancer treatment, screening, prevention, genetics, and supportive care, and complementary and alternative medicine; a registry of more than 5,000 open and 16,000 closed cancer clinical trials from around the world; and directories of physicians, professionals who provide genetics services, and organizations that provide cancer care.

Medicare has posted an update to last year's physician services data, including anesthesia services, and a table reflecting physician payment data for many Medicare-covered preventive services.This follows CMS' releases of information about payments it made to hospitals for common elective procedures and other hospital admissions and Medicare payment data for ambulatory surgery centers and hospital outpatient departments.

The California Prison Health Care Receivership Corp. is a San Jose-based non-profit organization created to house the activities of federal Receiver Robert Sillen. The Receivership was established by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson as the result of a 2001 class action law suit (Plata v. Schwarzenegger) brought against the State of California over the quality of medical care in the state's 33-prison system. The court found that the care was a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment of the incarcerated.

The Suicide Prevention Resource Center put together a two page report for journalists that gives recommendations for how to cover suicide safely. According to SPRC, he way suicide is reported in the media can affect vulnerable individuals and contribute to additional suicides and suicide attempts. This guide has sections for reporters and editors, detailing what to avoid and what to do when covering suicide.

The National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, has launched a Spanish-language Web site with information about health issues that affect Hispanic seniors. The range of health topics includes diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and diabetes; tips on choosing a doctor and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The site has free publications in Spanish and links to other health-related, Spanish-language Web sites such as Medicare and MedlinePlus.

New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has launched a Web site specifically about 9/11 health-related issues, including information about scientific research, where those affected can go for free treatment and medicine, and links to financial assistance providers, social-service and environmental groups.

An online search clinic in August 2007 covered NLM MeSH vocabulary and how best to describe substance concepts and effectively search PubMed for relevant citations to articles. Watch the recorded clinic or read the transcript. Related: The PubMed Tutorial

The most comprehensive online resource covering all aspects of alcohol abuse and alcoholism [Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Inst. of Health (NIH), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)].

The KID is a database developed as part of a Federal-State-Industry partnership sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It is composed of more than 100 clinical and nonclinical variables for each hospital stay. These include:

This publication put together by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) summarizes information from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), an all-payer hospital database maintained by AHRQ. This report updates an earlier Fact Book that described hospital care in 1997. AHRQ has attempted to maintain the general content of the earlier document to allow for easy comparison between 1997 and 2002 hospital care information.

An online search clinic was presented by the NLM and the National Training Center and Clearinghouse on Aug. 23, 2007. The presentation covered NLM MeSH vocabulary and how best to describe substance concepts and effectively search PubMed for relevant citations to articles. You can watch the recorded clinic or read the transcript. After consultation with NLM experts, answers to specific questions posed during and after the live clinic will be posted on the Search Clinic Web site in the next few weeks.

The Wide-ranging OnLine Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) provides access to a wide array of public health information. The site recently added features that allow for more complex queries, allows you to export data, and lets you make charts and maps from your data. The site also has dropped its requirement to register and login.

The North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza was announced by the Presidents of the United States and Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada on August 21, 2007 in Montebello, Canada, at the North American Leaders Summit. The plan outlines a collaborative North American approach that recognizes that mitigating the effects of a pandemic requires coordinated action by all three countries. It outlines how Canada, Mexico and the United States will work together to prepare for and manage outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza and pandemic influenza.

Eurosurveillance is an open-access scientific journal, free of charge for readers and authors devoted to the epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable diseases, published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden. All articles are put through a peer-review system, and are indexed by PubMed/Medline. Eurosurveillance releases weekly e-alerts.

The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases is a global electronic reporting system from the International Society for Infectious Diseases for outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases and toxins. It is updated daily as new reports are released. E-mail alerts are also available.

Designed to help users find information quickly on a variety of health and health policy topics, from basics to advanced details. The guide culls links from reliable national and California sites, covering 70-plus individual topics. Intended as a health policy resource for legislative and executive staff, agency staff, and others involved in health policy work, the guide orients users to a variety of topics and identifies sources of information, key research findings, and implications for policy.

CRED promotes research, training, and information dissemination on disasters, with a special focus on public health, epidemiology, structural and socio-economic aspects. It aims to enhance the effectiveness of developing countries' disaster management capabilities as well as fostering policy-oriented research.

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters maintains an Emergency Events Database - EM-DAT. The database contains data on the occurrence and effects of over 12,800 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to present. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies.

From its Web site: "The Center for Environmental Health is working to eliminate the threat that industrial chemicals pose to children, families, and communities." Its programs include: Public Interest Litigation Program, Community Health Program, Public Policy Program and Green Electronics and Sustainable Food Programs.

This report, from the CDC's National Vital Statistics System, presents final 2004 data on U.S. deaths; death rates; life expectancy; infant and maternal mortality; and trends by selected characteristics such as age, gender, Hispanic origin, race, marital status, educational attainment, injury at work, state of residence, and cause of death. Previous reports presented preliminary mortality data for 2004 and summarized key findings in the final data for 2004. The report, a PDF, is 120 pages. (Aug. 27, 2007)

The MEPS is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS, from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, offers data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.

The NHIS is a survey conducted annually by interviewers of the U.S. Census Bureau for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. The site offers reports and data classified by gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, family income, poverty status, health insurance coverage, marital status, and place and region of residence. Estimates are presented for selected chronic conditions and mental health characteristics, functional limitations, health status, health behaviors, health care access and utilization, and human immunodeficiency virus testing. Percentages and percent distributions are presented in both age-adjusted and unadjusted versions.

The Military Vaccine Agency is the lead agent for a network of regional Vaccine Healthcare Centers (VHCs) to be established throughout the Department of Defense (DoD), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) is a nonpartisan policy research organization based in Washington, DC that designs and conducts studies on the U.S. health care system. HSC's surveys are used as a resource for policy makers in government and in private industry.

Minnesota law limits the amount of gifts that pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers can give to practitioners. In addition, the law also requires pharmaceutical wholesalers and manufacturers to report certain payments that are made to practitioners. Those reports are available at this site as PDFs. See a story about what the Minnesota data shows.

Cara James, senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, examines the scope of health care disparities and how race and ethnicity affect health status, insurance coverage and access to health services. James also discusses major national proposals to eliminate disparities. [Aug. 20, 2007]

Oregon released a Web site on Aug. 2 to help consumers compare the cost of services at hospitals across Oregon. The site provides information on the average payment to Oregon hospitals for more than 80 medical procedures, based on calculations from payments by the nine largest health insurance carriers in the state. However, the site does not average the cost of all claims -meaning that Medicare, Oregon Health Plan and uninsured patients likely would face different costs for the procedures.

Find experts in 36 major health policy topics - such as health care costs, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs and the uninsured - and more than 200 subtopics. The service also narrows down to experts who live in a particular state or media market, speak Spanish or other languages, and can take phone calls after hours.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of state health policymakers. NASHP says it provides a forum for constructive, nonpartisan work across branches and agencies of state government on critical health issues facing states.

The 1,056 person center provides medical support to combat forces and of the military managed-care system. It provides scientific expertise and services in clinical and field preventive medicine, environmental and occupational health, health promotion and wellness, epidemiology and disease surveillance, toxicology, and related laboratory sciences. Professional disciplines represented include chemists, physicists, engineers, physicians, optometrists, epidemiologists, audiologists, nurses, industrial hygienists, toxicologists, entomologists, and many others as well as sub-specialties within these professions.

ARHP maintains a Media Response Network as a service for journalists and works to ensure that reproductive health is accurately covered in the media. Through the Media Response Network ARHP connects journalists to experts.

This new Aging Data and Statistics Web site brings together information sources from across CDC. The site offers data about life expectancy, rates of death from specific causes, numbers of people with chronic diseases, health behavior and more.

The ATSDR, based in Atlanta is a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ATSDR serves the public by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances.

A site designed to provide physicians with an evidence-based, non-commercial source of the latest findings about the drugs they prescribe. The site is sponsored by the PACE Program of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging and says it has no ties to any pharmaceutical company. Its clinical content is created by an independent group of physicians and researchers on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

When you go to the main page it gives you Army data but it also has data from the Navy, Air Force and Marines. You can use the data to look at causes of injury, compare months to find trends, select specific geographic locations or compare the types of body parts affected. To get Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force data, go to the left-hand menu under Installation Rpts and click on Injury Reports. That will give you links for the other branches of the military.

A database of up-to-date and historical data on diseases and medical events (e.g., hospitalizations, ambulatory visits, reportable diseases, HIV tests, acute respiratory diseases, and health risk appraisals) and longitudinal data on personnel and deployments. Injuries are summarized using four different metrics which can be viewed by Service, Installation, and Major Command.

Cost and quality data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Medicare posted information about the payments it made to hospitals in fiscal year 2005 for common elective procedures and other hospital admissions, for ambulatory surgery centers, hospital outpatient departments and physician services.

From the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Health and Human Services, and other members of the Hospital Quality Alliance. Information on this Web site has been provided primarily by hospitals that have agreed to submit quality information for Hospital Compare to make public. For help searching and understanding the data, see "Covering Hospitals: Using Tools on the Web." Even better ... find stories using AHCJ’s ready-to-use Hospital Compare data. Now, AHCJ has made it easier for journalists to compare hospitals in their regions by generating spreadsheet files from the HHS database, allowing members to compare more than a few hospitals at a time, using spreadsheet or database software. AHCJ provides key documentation and explanatory material to help you understand the data possibilities and limits. Need help in analyzing Excel files? AHCJ offers a tutorial about investigating health data using spreadsheets.

The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) is a family of health care databases and related software tools and products developed through a federal-state-industry partnership and sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). These databases enable research on a broad range of health policy issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care programs, and outcomes of treatments at the national, State, and local market levels.

Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data, publications, survey instruments, and general information available for downloading. MEPS collects data on the specific health services that Americans use, how frequently they use them, the cost of these services, and how they are paid for, as well as data on the cost, scope, and breadth of private health insurance held by and available to the U.S. population. MEPS is supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The ORHP promotes better health care service in rural America. Congress charged the Office with informing and advising the Department of Health and Human Services on matters affecting rural hospitals, and health care, co-ordinating activities within the department that relate to rural health care and maintaining a national information clearinghouse.

"The association's mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of rural Americans and to provide leadership on rural health issues through advocacy, communications, education, research and leadership."

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues helps non-metropolitan journalists define the public agenda for their communities, and grasp the local impact of broader issues. It interprets rural issues for metro news media, conducts seminars and publishes research and good examples of rural journalism. It helps journalists all over America learn about rural issues, trends and events in areas they've never seen but have much in common with their own.

Offers information from the National Libraries of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies and health-related organizations. Preformulated searches are included in MedlinePlus and give easy access to medical journal articles. MedlinePlus also has information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials and latest health news.

Offers wire services; embargoed news from major journals; access to experts; a database of media contacts at universities, colleges, and other research organizations; calendars for medical meetings and listings for awards and fellowships available to journalists.

Online news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Qualified reporters and freelancers can access embargoed and breaking news, peer-reviewed journals, experts and other valuable resources through EurekAlert!. To register, visit www.eurekalert.org/register.php.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press offers a free, bi-weekly audio podcast called News Media Update to cover recent developments and trends in media law that affect journalists and media attorneys. Topics include libel, invasion of privacy, freedom of information, reporter's privilege, access to courts, newsgathering rights, and prior restraints.

An independent nonprofit journalistic enterprise. Its mission: to inform the public on state and local health policy and finance issues as they develop. FHN posts health-related stories reported around the state, highlights the Florida impact of national stories, and tracks state health legislation.

Created by Jean Roth at the National Bureau of Economic Research to make access to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Healthcare Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) data files easier.

Track clinical trials sponsored by NIH and industry. Effective in late September 2008, basic results data for certain clinical trials are required for public posting and, over time, increasing numbers of basic results submissions will be made available to the public. The summary data tables required for reporting trial results include:

baseline characteristics, which are taken at the beginning of a trial and may include demographic and physiologic characteristics of the participants

participant flow to indicate the number of participants at each stage of the trial